Code Silver
by queenkepner
Summary: "There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment." Jackson and April find themselves reminiscing on their past when forced to spend some time together during a hospital lock down.
1. Chapter 1

" **And** _ **I'd choose you**_ **; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality,** _ **I'd find you and I'd choose you**_ **."**

When you lose one half of your heart, the world seems to spin differently. Truth be told, in some way or another, we are all raised to believe in fairy tales. What we're not taught is the part following the happy ending, where the tale ends and life happens. After all, even when you end up meeting your other half, people happen, life happens, and before you know it, you let go of your happily ever after. And you can love people so much, but you can never love them as much as you miss them.

That morning, when Jackson walks into the hospital, something feels off. As he clutches the strap of his bag, he glances around the lobby, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. The doctors are drinking their coffees, casually looking at their charts. The nurses are running around with all sorts of instruments in their hands, onto their next patients. He watches as the world continues, their lives happening to them, while his appeared to be on standstill, motionless. It seemed as though he was on pause, while everyone else simply kept going, leaving him behind, frozen in time.

Since inheriting his Grandfather's fortune, Jackson's life had… shifted. He'd bought a brand new car, and a brand new boat, and a brand new apartment… but still felt desperately empty. Sure, all those gadgets were gorgeous and fun, but at the end of the day, he still came back to an empty home. The home that once smelt like home-made lasagne and his wife's perfume, where he would stumble on his daughter's toys, had become immaculate. The warmth that once accompanied coming home had been replaced by a cold chill that never left him.

He looks around the nurses' station, where he suddenly spots her. In actuality, it'd be rather difficult to miss her, with her fiery hair and infectious smile. She was the only one in the hospital that constantly tried to bring joy to everyone's lives, but he could never figure out why their peers treated her so badly in return. To him, she was still the most wonderful person alive… she brought sunshine to people's lives, even if it meant casting a shadow on her own. He watches attentively as she flips through her chart, a preoccupied look on her mind.

Unable to look away, as though pulled in by the warmth he is missing so much lately, he realises the exact spot he is standing in is where his heart had been broken many years ago. He remembers seeing her in rollers and sweats, running around on the day of her wedding. In this exact spot, he had bumped into her, where she'd begged him to come to her wedding. That day, both of their lives changed forever, and had he not stood in that spot, the present would look very different.

But that was then and this was now, and even though he had once had the guts to stand up in front of hundreds of people to profess his love, he'd cowered away when faced with hard issues. Now, all he could do was look at the girl he once ruined a wedding for from the opposite side of the nurses' station, and hope she would glance back.

Finally, she turns around and their gazes meet. He gives her a warm smile, trying to ignore the fact that they were now separated for good, both emotionally and physically. Her green eyes have forests growing inside of them, but instead of their usual warmth and autumn glow, the trees sway away, and just like that she averts her gaze and keeps walking, ignoring his attempts at getting to her.

There was no need for him to still find himself pining after her: she'd hurt him and he'd hurt her back, and in the end, he asked for the divorce. But even though he acted out of reason, all the reasons in the world would never explain why she's the only woman that holds his heart in her hands. Maybe there's a world where he's stood in the same spot, and instead of pining after a girl he left, his wife, his sunshine, would come to him. Yes, maybe there's a universe without all the noise in his head and the pride that made him so insecure and the coldness in his heart that turns off and on like a security fence. Maybe, there's a universe where she turns around and everything is okay.

Some people bring out the best in you, others bring out the worst, and then, there are those remarkably rare addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you'd follow them into hell just to get your fix. That person for Jackson was April Kepner, and maybe that's why even after she was long gone he couldn't avert his gaze.

* * *

When the elevator door opens, he's met with the sight of the woman he couldn't take his eyes off of this morning, or ever. As he turns to stand next to her, he can feel her shift away, and it's clear she is still avoiding him.

"April…" he furrows his eyebrows in a way she knows all too well, "what am I supposed to do?"

She looks up at him, feeling a familiar pang in her chest, "I need some space."

He looks at her, and the pain in the air makes him wish he could take her into his arms. He wants nothing more than to crash his world into hers and never let go, but reason holds him back. "April, two weeks ago we were staying up all night to talk, and now, I don't even know how to say hey…"

"Look," she tries to hit the elevator button a second time, "you're always going to be the guy I threw away reason for, the guy I named a pig after, my best friend and the father of my child… but right now, I can't be your person."

"I thought we were okay."

"And I thought that you were the love of my life."

* * *

The next time they see each other that day, they're both walking down an empty corridor on the hospital's east wing. She nervously checks behind her, hoping to see a familiar face so she could distract herself from having a conversation with him, but to her clear disdain they seemed to be the only two around.

She can feel his eyes bore holes into her side, and she wants nothing more than to look at him and see his ocean blue eyes, and feel… home. But the waves are no longer hers to call home, as the tide rolled and spat her out, no longer wanting her. After all, he didn't deserve to play the victim when he was the one that asked for a divorce. Sure, they'd had issues, but she always thought they would end up together. Out of everything she hadn't figured out in the world, there was one thing she always thought she knew for sure: that they were meant to be.

April's naivety in love stemmed from the fact that there had only ever been one person that made her world stop. He was her first love, her first everything, and imagining that their recent escapade in Montana was their last everything made her feel sick. His twinkly ocean gaze looking down on her in the dimly lit hotel corridor made her see stars, but to him it was just… fun. In recent weeks, she had realised it was time she stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt, stop trying to see something in someone that clearly didn't want her to see anything. There was nothing wrong with giving up after years of giving in, so that's what April had decided to do.

What she'd said to him in the elevator was true: she did believe they were soul mates, that in some twisted reality, she would be his and he would be hers and life would've handed them this favour. Instead, she lay asleep at night in her new apartment and started dating again. Just because their happily ever after had ended didn't mean that April's story was over, and as tragic as it looked from the outside, she was determined to turn her life around. She may have thought that he was the love of her life, and he would always remain the only man that held her heart, but the earth was spinning fine before he told her he loved her, and it continued to now that he didn't.

The silence as they both walk is illustrated by all the memories they shared over the years. The laughing, the kissing, the dancing… all pent up and left into a silent oblivion. They could both remember every second together, yet the distance between their bodies now felt oceans apart. The noise their memories once brought had become a silent secret, an unspoken shared bond.

They both turn the corner as he catches a glance of one of her red locks when both of their pagers go off simultaneously.

 _Code Silver_

And then they both stop in their tracks.

The few seconds before either of them utter a single word feels like an eternity, as though glued in their tracks, unable to form a coherent sentence.

Finally, he speaks out, "it's probably nothing." But his voice falters, and even he has trouble believing his own words. As the owner of the hospital and chair of the foundation, in case of any emergency of the sort it would be his duty to worry and make sure hospital protocol ran smoothly.

He heads towards the revolving door right in front of them and pushes it hurriedly. And it doesn't budge. He tries again, when the realisation dawns onto him that the code had blocked every major door between wings. In other words, they were stuck in a secluded wing of the hospital, unbeknownst to the rest of the staff.

He turns to April for the first time and sees her biting her lip nervously.

"Okay, this if fine. This is all just…" he mimics in the air, "just fine. Can I use your phone? I left mine to charge in the lounge."

"Uh… so did I."

When he turns around, a hand on his temple as he tries to make sense of the situation, April is gone.

Before he has time to process where she could've possibly escaped in such little time, he hears her voice from around the corner. "Jackson! There's an emergency phone over here."

Without second thought, he immediately dials the emergency phone number that links up to any line in the hospital that is available. In a matter of seconds, he hears the click of someone picking up on the other end.

"This is Dr. Avery from floor 3 of the East Wing, I am currently trapped between two intersections with Dr. Kepner. I was paged Code Silver."

"Avery, this is Dr. Hunt. We are on lockdown protocol. The police and a SWAT team are on their way."

"A SWAT team? I don't – I don't understand. We need to be let out of here."

"We can't do that and you know it."

He looks back at April and she is pacing up and down the corridor, the colour drained from her features. The worried look on her face doesn't help the nervous pit in his stomach, but finally he has the guts to ask. "Is this like last time?"

On the other line, a long pause indicates what Jackson couldn't have predicted. "Stay safe, I'll call this line again when we know more down here."

When he looks back around, numbness overtakes his entire body. He looks around at April and grabs her wrist hurriedly, then opens a closet he had spotted on her left, and shoves both their bodies in there, locking the door behind as he pants heavily. When he turns to face her, he is met with her confusion.

Without needing to say any words, she reads his face like an open book. The code wasn't an error, or a drill, or an escaped psych patient. It was the same code they'd been paged years ago, and like some sick twist of faith, they were transported back to their first year of residence at Seattle Grace – Mercy West Hospital.

He remembers the gun, and looking straight into it. He remembers Cristina, and Meredith, and Derek… he remembers Charles, and Reid. He remembers April covered in blood. He remembers.

In the closet, the air has been sucked out of both of them. "My mother has Harriet today. They went to the park."

"So she's okay, she's not here," April walks to the wall and sits down, a relieved look on her face.

"She's not here."

"And we can't go down? We need to help. I need to help," she says.

"All the doors are locked," he sighs "okay, okay, this is fine. We'll stay here and wait for the landline to ring. There's no way of knowing what's out there," he paces to the other end of the tiny closet, and quietly sits on the floor besides her.

A silence falls upon the small space as they both try to make sense of the situation. In moments where the entire hospital is jeopardised, feeling powerless takes them back to the years where they were only interns, when their moves were calculated and decided by someone with more importance.

"You know, after – after the last time, and after I went over there… I should be much better at this," she lets out a nervous laugh.

"Hey," he extends his arm, and softly places it on hers, "we're not robots. I mean, honestly, it could just be a psych patient that got out."

"I feel so much better," she says sarcastically as he glares at her, "have you ever considered becoming a psychiatrist?"

"I'd probably be better than the ones we went to see," the joke is of bad taste, and he knows it the second it leaves his mouth.

For a while, they sit in silence, and he realises that his hand is still resting on her arm. She thinks about all those weeks she went into counselling with him, where she felt like she was sitting with a stranger. At one point, he'd loved her, and cherished her to no ends, but those days had clearly been long gone when they had sat on that couch and dissected everything that had gone wrong in their happily ever after.

She can feel his hand on her arm, too, and she wonders why she doesn't feel the urge to pull away. He is still a mark in the distance that she uses to find her way, and when the ghost of their memories comes around to haunt her, he is still comforting, familiar, fleeting. When his touch finds her, he still feels like home.

A half hour must go by where neither of them say a word, but simply sit next to each other in the small room. Like two strangers that knew all of each other's secrets.

"I'm sorry about your Grandfather." Her soft voice breaks the silence.

"It's fine," but he's not fine; his head is a symphony of pain, a sadistic master maestro conducting an opus of excruciating, devastating perfecting of his façade, "he wasn't the greatest man in the world."

"That's nonsense. Your pain shouldn't be minimised because of someone's lack of moral compass." She smiles up at him, and in the dim closet, a light shines upon her eyes, her kind, green eyes. "You're allowed to miss him, even if he wasn't the greatest," she puts her hand on is, "he was the only man in your life. You don't have to justify that."

Despite everything that had happened between the both of them, despite their conversation just today where she spat his love right back at him, he saw that she was still the most compassionate soul he knew. They'd lost a child, she left him, he gave up on them, asked for a divorce and openly started engaging with other people around her, and yet here she was, clutching his hand like the world depended on it.

It's a sight few would believe, Jackson and April, trapped together during a lockdown, holding onto each other for dear life. But for people that knew them intimately, it was obvious they had always been each other's life vest. Call it fate or whatever else you desire, but in times of need, they always found a way to gravitate towards each other.

"I remember it all. I remember the gun, and Meredith… and you. I remember Charles and Reid's funerals, and coming back to our empty apartment every night together," he looks down at the ground.

"Me too."

"And Derek I mean… he almost died. And then he actually did, years later, in the most uneventful car accident…" he lets out a nervous laugh, "isn't that ridiculous?"

There is a pause between them after his rhetorical question, where neither of them can wrap their minds around the intricacies that life has presented them with. Life, however fickle it was, had been taken from people they knew and people they loved, plucked one by one like background characters in a play.

After over a decade of knowing each other, it had become clear that everything that had happened to them, the people that they met and the people that they lost, had all somehow made them end up in this exact place.

When she looks at him and sees his perplexed expression, her heart hurts. She remembers his piercing screams in the middle of the night during their resident years, where she would have to come and comfort him in the middle of the night. She remembers holding his hand through the funerals of their friends, much like they were doing now, and she remembers seeing the same puzzled look on his face.

When she looks at him, she sees the same vulnerable boy whose hand she held through his nightmares.

Her younger self had fallen in love with his silent eyes. She imagined his lashes wrote anthologies every time they kissed his cheeks. Maybe that's why she could still hear centuries of voices in his quiet. Every unspoken part of Jackson Avery sang symphonies when he touched her, and she found herself wanting to be a musician all over again.

"I'm sorry I never stood up for you last year over the whole Minnick incident." He looks at her but averts his gaze in shame, remembering how badly he'd let everyone treat her.

"It's okay," she lets out a sad sigh, "I guess I just always thought that when everyone was against me, I'd always have you on my team."

Just like that, she manages to break his heart all over again. He pictures April feeling alone, trying to do her job as all her friends and co-workers turned against her. In those times, she'd felt so alone she considered leaving Seattle multiple times, and the only person she had wanted to talk it over with had also decided to turn on her.

"You were just doing your job I – it was a lapse of judgement from me."

There is peace in the silence they find themselves in and after over a decade of knowing each other, it had become clear that everything that had happened to them, the people that they met and the people that they lost, had all somehow made them end up in this exact place.

"You know," she breaks the silence, "the last time when the gun was pointed at me, I told him I'd never lived. I told him all about how my story wasn't finished, that I hadn't been lovedyet."

He looks as her face and sees the best years of his life right in front of him. He sees his best friend that he'd let go, he sees his wife, his person. "And if he asked now?"

The question catches her so off guard that she pulls her hand from his and runs it through her hair, giving him a nervous smile. In this small space, with the man she had cursed out just hours prior, the truth seemed to spill out like quicksand.

"Well, now I've had my epic love. And I've loved, uncontrollably and more than ever before, Samuel and Harriet and… you." Her voice is small but the words that come out of her mouth have a sense of incredulous inevitability, "you showed me life."

"April…"

Suddenly, the landline outside the closet rings and pierces through both of their hearts. He bolts up, trying to wrap his head around her words that form daggers in his chest.

"Stay here." He says, set on keeping her as safe as possible.

"What? No, I'm coming with you."

"We don't know what's out there," he tries to reason.

"Well then _you_ stay here, sound good?" she gives him a sarcastic smile as he walks towards the door.

He sighs in annoyance at her stubbornness, because to him she is fragile and anything he does would be to protect her. His fears stem from seeing her hurt, or hearing her over the phone while he is powerless, which is why when he is present he wishes to do nothing more than to keep her safe and still.

But she isn't the frail princess waiting to be saved by her prince anymore. He showed her how to live, but she became brave when she had to figure out how to live without him. Yes, this time, she didn't need him to whisk her away from the altar, to pour courage into her lungs and help her breathe on her own, because she's learnt to save herself.

Together, they walk towards the door and he unlocks it, and she turns the corner to answer the phone.

"This is Kepner speaking."

"Hey. The situation's been handled, but there are a some casualties to get through." Owen's voice says on the other line.

"I- uh… can we not help?"

"The best way to help is to stay where you are. Just stay where you are until someone comes to get you. Okay?"

"Okay. Got it." She replies.

She turns to face Jackson with a defeated look on her face. "There's been multiple casualties and we have to stay put."

"So what, we're just sitting ducks?"

"I mean, out here in the corridor – yes. We are the definition of sitting ducks. In the closet, we're patient, _and_ useless ducks."

He cocks his face in amusement as she pulls him by the arm back into the small space they were previously sharing. He sees, now, how much stronger than he is she has become. Not figuratively, but in the way she acts. Not that she ever was frail or helpless to him – but she was always April, and he had to protect April. Only now did he really see that she could protect herself.

When he turns to face her after closing the door, the light is hitting her features so perfectly it seems cruel. She looks like a piece of art, with her red hair cascading past her shoulders like flames she set into his heart, and her soft eyes looking up at him while he is too busy getting lost in them.

This is one of those moments where he stops thinking, where the past has no effect on the present, and the future seems too blurry to worry about. No, in this moment, all he sees is the woman that's been behind his every thought for the last decade.

And all he wants to do is kiss her.

So he does.

When their lips meet, it's like two puzzle pieces coming together. It's a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It's a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep…a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocks the earth off its axis.

There were many versions of Jackson Avery, but this one had been rare since he'd given up on their relationship. It was also April's favourite. It was the opposite of Jackson's most public face, which was pure control enclosed in a paper-thin wrapper of power. But this version of Jackson was Jackson the boy. This was the Jackson who defended her through everything, the Jackson who professed his love for her at her own wedding, the Jackson who contained every wild spark so that it wouldn't show up in other versions of him.

In this version of Jackson, she still saw the love of her life.

Like regaining consciousness after being knocked out, she suddenly pulls herself away from him. She touches her lips, feeling the warmth his own had brought just a few seconds ago, like a secret only they were in on.

"You can't keep doing this;" she shuffles away and sits back down, "breaking your promise that it's the last time. Because one day, it will be, but I won't be expecting it. And I'll keep waiting for you, for the next time."

Her words manage to break his heart all over again. It brings him back to all of the times his actions have hurt her, to even today when she told him she believed he was the love of her life. To his core, Jackson Avery never believed in fairy tales, but if they were to be true, he would have gladly spent his with April Kepner. "I didn't…"

"No, it's not fair. You left me."

His throat clenches up like he is trying to swallow down their past, "Because you left me first."

She looks up at him standing up, her eyes pooled with tears, "but I came back." She says.

" _You didn't"_ she thinks.

He sits down next to her, an air of nostalgia past him. For so many years, he held her leaving to Jordan after Samuel's death against her, yet this was their first conclusive conversation about it. They weren't fighting about it anymore like they once had, taking jabs at each other's hearts.

The person sat next to him was the same person who'd punched a guy the night before their board exams, where he realised that his best friend was also the most beautiful woman in the world. Yes, it was the same person he'd promised, vowed even, to marry in a field with butterflies. She was the one that ran to a burning bus for him, and the one that lived in the room down the hall from his for months, where he would gather up the courage to come and knock each night, only to coward away back to his room. She was the same April he had fallen in love with many years ago, and the same April that he was still in love with.

"There's not one day that goes past where I don't think about the day of our divorce. That I don't think about your question." He turns to her and takes her hand, "you never let me answer it. And to be honest, I don't know that I could have."

She remembers seeing the love of her life asking her to sign her love away from him, his silence sending a thousand jags into her heart.

He remembers seeing her face as he asked her one last time to sign the papers, and being unable to answer her question. He remembers feeling like a cloud was casting a shadow on every memory they had that brought him joy. He remembers feeling like he was in a dark tunnel, and that neither of them would be able to escape to the light if they were together.

He'd known every day since that he was wrong.

"We really made a mess of things, didn't we?" she feels his thumb draw circles on her hand.

The question lingers in the air for a few seconds while they both get lost in each other's touch. She leans her head on his shoulder and he has to close his eyes. Being near her, being touched by her, is like coming home. Like he was just wandering around until she came to him.

"I feel like everything I do here is a failure." He pauses, "And I'm buying all these things thinking they're going to make me happy, but I just end up feeling emptier than how I started,"

She looks at him and sees her person, the man behind her every thought, the father of her child, her best friend. Since she'd fallen for him, her heart had been the victim of multiple knifings, but under the warm light of the closet, she still saw him. Him, him and only him. Always, and forever.

"You know," she starts, "the big flashy car, the boat, the fancy job… they don't define you. I knew you when we were sharing a crummy apartment and had none of those things, and I still thought you were the greatest person in the world."

"I just," he looks into her eyes, and to anyone else, the green specks in them may have looked picturesque, but to him it looked like coming home, "I don't know how to become a person I'm proud of."

"Just let yourself be. At least a little." She smiles at him.

In her face, he sees the rest of his life. He sees the woman that lets him be himself, that doesn't love Jackson Avery the heir of the Harper-Avery foundation, but rather Jackson, the scared boy with the broken heart.

Time passes in the small room while they bask in each other's proximity. Her head is still resting on his shoulder and his fingers draws patterns on her hand, tracing back to a time where they were together.

They think about what's out there, how years ago they'd been in the heart of the action in a similar situation, and it had shaped them and their friendship forever. When he holds her hand, he thinks about when she would softly draw circles into his during the funerals of their friends, when they were the only people in the world there for each other.

She thinks about how hard she's worked at forgetting him, at forgetting this, yet every night after she puts Harriet to sleep she wonders what life could be like if she just hadn't left. She always looks to his side of the bed and wish that just once more, she wouldn't have to sleep alone. That just once, the past could just be the past.

But under this light, she sees him differently, for under this light, she sees a future for the firs time in a long time.

"When I'm having a bad day, I sit and let my mind escape to the night we drove to Lake Tahoe. That was one of the happiest moments of my life, April." He turns to face her and sees her cheeks have turned a familiar shade of pink. Gently, he caresses them with the tenderness one would use when handling the most precious of things. "You being by my side was the greatest promise that the rest of my life would be epic. It was like… like winning the lottery, and the prize was getting to marry my best friend."

"Jackson…"

It was the strangest sensation in the world, falling in love with her. It was like being at the edge of a cliff. Trouble was, once he was past the edge, he'd tried to grasp for a safety net. This time, he realised that the beauty of it was letting yourself fall, and trusting the other person would be there in the end to catch you.

It seemed pitiful to have waited this long to let all of his emotions out, but a wise man had once told him that if you loved someone, you told them. He'd grown accustomed to choosing reason over his heart, but this time, he could hear Mark Sloan's words very clearly.

Every realisation hits him harder than the previous one as he continues to get lost in her gaze, "I'm serious. I mean, every day I look in the mirror and wonder if the man that told you he loved everything about you would be proud of me now. And every day I know the answer. No. I let go of us because it got hard, and because I thought that love wasn't meant to be painful or difficult, but that's just a lot of crap. The whole thing is. April, every day I'm miserable because I thought doing the right thing would make me happy, but our love was never built on doing the right thing. Tell me you've never had that thought and I'll never speak of it again. Just tell me."

He did not care if she was stubborn, indecisive and infuriating, flawed and chaotic, he loved her. He would rather have messy with her than simple with any other.

"Until you decided you didn't want this marriage any longer, I really did think that I couldn't live without you. Now, I know that I can. I can live without you." She feels his fingers trace lines on her cheeks, feels herself wanting no one other than him, "I waited for you. I waited for you to see that I was still the girl at the altar waiting for her best friend to sweep her away, and you never came. How can I possibly jeopardise my life again for you when this might just be another mood you're in when you feel like breaking the rules?"

"Forget the rules, forget them all. I don't care about any of it anymore, I just want you. All of you. I love you. Forever. We do this, and we forget the past. We learn from it, and we leave it behind. This time it will be me and you and Harriet, and we'll be better than ever before. We'll be a family."

Just like that, in a secluded closet in a section of the hospital neither of them ever step foot in, Jackson Avery puts his heart on the line a second time for April Kepner. It seemed as though revelations always hit him in shockwaves, but somehow each time it was when he saw her, and felt her touching on the darkest parts of his being. She was, had always been, and would always be the one.

The image of them forming a family blooms a beautiful grin on her face that he can't help but run his thumb over, gently caressing her lips. She can hear her heart beating in her chest, and she can hear his too.

Of course, she still fears that one day he will wake up and realise that she is a burden he no longer wants to call his. Her brain is telling her to think things over, that he's taken her heart and ripped it to shreds before, but her gaze locked with his tells her that this time, this is it. No more games, no more giving up, just two people in love.

"Tell me that you won't wake up one morning and realise you no longer want this," a small tear escapes her eye, but he swiftly brushes it away before it has time to roll down her cheek.

"I messed up, but I'm not letting you go again."

Two hours ago she swore off any thoughts that even included him, and now he was pouring his heart out to her. His eyes took her back to the time he asked her to run away with him, where she stood down from the altar, grabbed his hand, and ran. After all this time, they were still meant to be.

"Jackson, I can live without you." She takes the hand cupping her cheek and clutches it tightly, "but I don't want to."

He kisses her again, this time; the kiss shows him the rest of his life. He sees himself growing old with April, and seeing their children grow up. He sees early mornings and the smell of her cooking, he sees the warmth of her body against his in their bed, he sees it, he sees happiness. He sees sunshine.

Their love was not an equation, not a contract, and not a smooth ride. Their love was the slate under the chalk, the ground where buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. The place you come back to, no matter where you are headed.

"We'll do this, April. We can - we can move. We can get a house with a big yard, and give Harriet some siblings. We can go live somewhere where we can continue our story, together. I don't need any of this, and I don't want it. You and Harriet are my future. I don't need anything else." He can't stop smiling.

"You want this? You really want this?" she hears the future in his words, and she chooses to believe him.

"I want this."

A knock interrupts their promises to each other, with a uniformed man opening the door. "SWAT team, this area is being cleared. We'll walk you out of the building."

They both exhale a breath of relief and turn to each other, ready to take on the world.

He stands up first and looks down at the woman he has just vowed to spend the rest of his life with, and he doesn't want to waste a second of it now that he knows. He extends his hand to her, "Ready?"

She smiles at him with one of those smiles that could stop the world and where he's brought back to all the times where he knew that she was the one.

"Me and you."

He smiles back, and looks down upon their fingers intertwined with each other, finally holding his entire world, "Me and you."

-o-o-o-

This is the longest one-shot I've ever written, and subsequently the one I may be the proudest of. I've scattered some of my favourite quotes from literature here and there, so bonus points if you spot those. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoy writing these two's incredible love story.

Please review! I love hearing your comments on my writing.

Also, this will have a second part, just a short and sweet send off so they can live their fairy-tale in peace


	2. Chapter 2

_**2 weeks later**_

To many, the sight looks ordinary. Two people surrounded by boxes, ready to move out. After all, it happens every day. People move in search of a better place to live, or when constraints lead them to. Whatever the reason may be, moving is always a way to start new.

Yes, to many, the sight is ordinary, but to them it's the greatest decision they've ever made.

The last of their boxes are neatly piles up in front of his apartment's door, where's she's been living ever since the incident at the hospital. Boxes filled with their whole lives, while their whole lives await them elsewhere.

Jackson hadn't been joking when he'd asked her to move far away. He wanted to start their new life together somewhere where they could just enjoy the beauty of it all together. No distractions from co-workers, or ghosts haunting them at every corner they turned.

A fresh start.

Actually, he'd never been so sure of anything in his life. Coming home alone on nights where he didn't have his daughter, where his only company was the bottom of a whiskey bottle, taught him that life wasn't worth it if you didn't surround yourself with the people that you love.

He knew now what he'd once known when he'd stood up at the barn: that life looked cold and empty when he wasn't with his sunshine. That once in a lifetime, you find the right person, the exact best person. Every day, the moment you open your eyes and pull off your blankets, that's what you hope for. The sunshine on your face, warm enough to make you heart sing.

Their history was complicated, but they'd both agreed to leave the past where it belonged: in the past. They no longer felt pain or resentment when looking at past mistakes, because they now knew they could still keep loving each other despite all of the hardships life had presented them with.

Nowadays, his mind no longer forces him to remember the time when he'd turned his back on her after she had done so too – when he'd made her sign away their fairy tale before they could get to the ending. Ever since that day, he had known one thing. You can end relationships, but you cannot end true love.

He looks at her as she packs Harriet's things into her bag, unable to wipe the smile from his face. After all this time, after everything that'd happened between them, this was it. They would be together forever. He feels like the last time they ran away together, but this time they are older and understand what losing each other is like. This time, he knows that life without her is just a painful abyss that can only be soaked in alcohol and late nights sitting up thinking about the girl with the fiery locks and forest eyes.

Unable to concentrate on anything else, he drops the box he was carrying and walks over to her, wrapping his arms around her.

"Hey – come on, you're going to make us late!" he spins her around and starts kissing her cheeks, and her forehead, and before they know it she's erupted in a fit of giggles.

"See, the great thing is that when it's your plane, they wait for you," he looks at her grinning face and sees the happiness they're going to bring to each other's lives forever.

"Jackson!" she slaps his arm, "I thought you said we were flying commercial."

He laughs and plants a kiss right on her forehead, "let's enjoy it, just this once."

She mocks a sigh and rolls her eyes, but not before wrapping her arms around her neck, "If you insist."

Many considered Jackson Avery to be a man of few words, always looking sullen and in deep thought. That's why anyone that saw him around April Kepner always expressed shock. For when he was around her, he would smile and dance and let himself be in love. In love with life, in love with living, in love with her.

April knew Jackson was an Avery from the first day she met him. But his last name never made him stand apart during their intern and residence years, where they always shared small cramped apartments with their friends, and Chinese takeaway was considered a luxury. To her, he would always be the same person she grew into adulthood with, and none of the stuff his name had gifted him over the years phased her.

She loved him for him. His flaws, his stubbornness, his impulsivity. Him. All of him.

The look in her eyes when she looks up at him makes him want to kick himself over the head for letting her go for so long in the first place. What had happened in the closet helped him see that life was too short not to let himself just be. Just be with the woman he loves. Just be himself. Just be happy.

He softly strokes her cheek, and takes her hand into his, "You ready?"

"Let's do this." She smiles.

* * *

The cool ocean breeze touching down on the city is a picturesque scene. Each house is its unique colour, and the seagulls sing as they fly over them. On the corner, a pale blue house with a small garden overlooks the distant ocean… and it's theirs.

San Francisco is where they'd started their story, and it's where they had decided to continue it.

It's where they had realised that maybe they were more than friends, that being there for each other through anything and everything could also mean more. The city had held a sacred part of both of their hearts for over 6 years, and now that their story had come full circle it felt right to go back to the beginning.

After all, April had told him she wanted to end where they began.

They wanted to raise Harriet somewhere where they wouldn't have to explain all the tragedy that had happened. They'd both grown to be who they were at Grey Sloan Memorial, but ultimately it only served to bring them further apart. Every on call room reminded them of their sneaking around early on in their relationship, but also where they'd tried to mend their marriage by sleeping together for months. The halls were where he'd get a glimpse of her auburn hair and his day would be made, but it was also where their friends had died many years prior. The patient's rooms, the ICU, the labs… they reminded them of the greatest moments of their lives, but also the worst. And it was time for a change. They no longer wanted to be held back by the ghosts of their pasts.

In the blue house, April is mixing cookie batter while Jackson laughs along with her, holding Harriet on the counter.

They'd once been kids in love, risking everything and ruining every relationship for each other. They'd once ran out of a wedding together and gotten married in secret. And now, they were ready to be in love with no secrets and no running. They no longer needed to take extraordinary measures to be together, because all they needed was each other. This time, they weren't on the run, for this time they had arrived at their destination.

The universe kept pulling them together, just waiting for them to see that they were meant to be together. Though the stepping stones to this very moment proved at times to be challenging, in the end, Jackson Avery had found his way back to April Kepner. Call it fate, or a fairy tale, or any other trope that's used to describe true love, but the reality is that love cannot be described in one single way. Their love had been extraordinary, chaotic, tender and tumultuous. Their love had been anything but one single thing. And best of all, it had only been theirs.

Even out on the neatly paved street, you can hear a distant song playing. The guitar chords could tug at anyone's heart strings in an instant, bringing them to a place of love and happiness. The song sounds like coming home, like two people that fought for each other finally finding each other's arms again.

Through the window, anyone would be able to see the three of them in their kitchen, laughing along as the music envelops the joyous atmosphere. He takes a spoon full of dough and drops it on her nose while she dances, and when she looks at him, their faces look like they could break apart from how big they are grinning.

From the outside, you wouldn't guess all the hardships their relationship endured to find its happily ever after. You wouldn't be able to imagine that his arms weren't always locked around her waist, dancing blissfully with their daughter like the fate of the whole world depends on their happiness.

You wouldn't be able to see their first kiss in front of a dimly lit hotel room, or his late night confessions to her about his feelings. You wouldn't see their stolen gazes in corridors, or him standing up at her wedding, or the countless times they put their hearts on the line for a chance to be together.

No, you would just see **love**.

On the door, a small sign has been hung up in front of the fresh paint, and on it, a small glimpse on where their journey has lead them,

" _Home, sweet home_."

* * *

And that's a wrap on this happily ever after! I hope this brought you a little bit of joy :)

Please review, I'd love to hear what you thought about this two part story and my writing!

Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews you've already left, it makes me so happy to see so many people love J and A as much as I do.


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